Inalienability and the personal domain in Mandarin Chinese discourse

Abstract

The main goal of this article is to examine the double subject construction in Mandarin Chinese discourse, a structure typologically characteristic of many languages in the East Asian region, and argue that it expresses an inalienable relation in terms of the personal domain (cf. Bally, 1926 [1994]). It is proposed that there are two main subtypes of the double subject construction whose form and discourse features are the main topic of analysis, particularly with regard to intonational features. In addition to these two structures, it is also shown that inalienable possession can be expressed by the use of certain discourse strategies related to a reduced or truncated form of the double subject construction. For the purposes of the discourse analysisdata belonging to the spoken narrative genre from the Chinese Pear/Guava Stories as well as conversational and written texts will be adduced as evidence.Although this paper is not the first to suggest that the double subject construction expresses inalienability, it is nonetheless the first to attempt a systematic account of this phenomena in terms of discourse, semantic and intonational properties.

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